Since the turn of the millennium, the practice of religious slaughter of animals for food consumption has become increasingly politicized in Europe, with over ten countries legally intervening in the practice or heavily debating to do so. This politicization occurs against the backdrop of 9/11, the alleged failure of multiculturalism and the problematization of Islam in Europe. The past decades have also witnessed the maturation of animal welfare as a political concern that is represented on local, national and European parliamentarian level. In her PHD research, Mariska Jung focuses on the conceptual questions and entanglements of race, religion and species that emerge from the political debate on religious slaughter. In this presentation, she will outline her general research framework and discuss parts of her work so far.

This event is co-organized by RHEA and EDGE
Time: 12.30-14.00, Thursday 10 December
Venue: will be communicated depending on corona measures
Registration required by sending an email to susan.dierickx@vub.be

Please join the Race and Religion Constellation team for an online conversation Tuesday 22 September on Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World authored by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson. Jackson is a black feminist scholar and assistant professor in English at the University of Southern California, USA. In Becoming Human, she grapples with the enduring relationship between animality and blackness in Western science and philosophy. Studying African diasporic literary and visual culture and straddling the disciplines of philosophy, art and science, Jackson develops a new understanding of black ontology that both critiques and displaces the racializing and animalizing logics underpinning Western thought.

In this session, we will discuss the book and any kind of question it stirs up within us. What kind of conceptual implications can we discern from thinking blackness from the perspective of animalization for theorizing the race-religion constellation? How do we envision the political implications Jackson’s theory has for doing anti-racist work? How, if at all, does the book resonate with our own individual scholarly, artistic or activist terrains of interest? These and more, or other, questions can be posed during the session. It will be an open forum for collective exploration and exchange.

We encourage you to get a copy of the book and read it, but if you are pressed for time consider to check out the interviews with Jackson on podcasts such as Parallax View and Always Already Podcast, or watch a recording of the online book launch on YouTube.

Please confirm your participation with Mariska Jung via mariska.jung@vub.be.